“First game all year I had a White Claw. I wanted to enjoy it,” Brooks said with a laugh. “No — hey, this is a good feeling. . . . We fought, we fought hard. You know, we had nothing right going for us. Nothing, zero. Nothing going for us in that first quarter other than, we’re just going to keep competing. We’ve done it all year, and the basketball gods gave us a break tonight.”
Brooks wasn’t exaggerating in his post-win haze. In the Wizards’ first game with a mostly full active roster — save backup point guard Raul Neto, who is nursing a groin injury — since before the outbreak, they played dead in the first quarter, falling into an 18-point hole before their bench rescued the game from becoming a blowout. Russell Westbrook and Bradley Beal snatched the win at the very end, putting together an 8-0 run in the final eight seconds.
If the bench kept Washington afloat, it was Westbrook who spurred the Wizards not to settle for a respectable loss. The starting point guard, seemingly fully recovered from his left quadriceps injury, was the team’s galvanizing force all night and set a new season high for the second straight game with 41 points. He added 10 rebounds and eight assists for good measure.
“They made big plays after big plays,” Brooks said of his two all-stars. “Russell willed this game. This is what he does, and he can do it — he can do it every night. He doesn’t take nights off. He doesn’t shoot the ball well every night, but he doesn’t take nights off.”
Beal turned in a late-blooming, 37-point performance and had 22 points in the fourth quarter.
After a layup from Westbrook tied the score at 141 with under a minute to play, Brooklyn went on a 5-0 run that Beal stopped with a pull-up three-pointer from 30 feet out at the top of the key with 8.1 seconds left. With the Wizards now down two, guard Garrison Mathews nabbed a bad inbounds pass from Joe Harris and dumped the ball off to Westbrook in the corner, and the point guard hit a three to put the Wizards up for good with 4.3 seconds to play.
“It was a crazy game. I’ve been in some crazy games, but this is definitely up there with the finish,” Westbrook said afterward. “. . . Well, I saw the time, score, just tried to get a quick steal . . . go for the win. This time, we didn’t have anything to lose. It’s win or go home, and we need this win very bad.”
The Wizards (4-12) had their normal contributors back, other than Neto and center Thomas Bryant, who is lost for the year with a partially torn ACL. Starting forward Deni Avdija and backup point guard Ish Smith returned to the lineup after finally getting out of the NBA’s coronavirus protocols.
Smith and backup center Moritz Wagner, in just his second game back, fueled Washington early on. After Washington took three timeouts in the first quarter to try to ignite some spark after falling behind by 18, the second unit finally pulled even with Nets stars Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant off the court.
“He changed it with his energy,” Brooks said of Wagner. “That’s the thing, once Alex [Len] gets into better shape — he hasn’t played in a while, either . . . we’re going to have three [centers] that do a little bit different, and they’re going to be good for us.”
Wagner added 17 points on 7-for-8 shooting from the field in 20 minutes, and Smith had 13 on 6-for-9 shooting.
Durant had 37 points and Joe Harris finished with 30 to lead the Nets, who were without star guard James Harden because of a leg injury.
The Washington bench went on a 22-7 run from late in the first quarter to early in the second to keep things competitive. Westbrook was also critical in keeping things afloat with a quieter Beal before halftime. Beal was efficient but took only six shots and had 11 points in 19 first-half minutes. Westbrook had 19 of his 41 points at the break.
“This was one of the craziest games, if not the craziest, I’ve ever been around,” Brooks said. “I mean, look what happened at the start. We couldn’t stop them at all. . . . For us to come back to cut it to, I think 10, that was almost a win in itself. We fought, we battled, we clawed, we gave ourselves a chance, and hopefully this is the start of something that we’re going to be proud of once we get through all of what we’ve been through. I’m looking forward to the next 16 games, one game at a time.”
